Last week, reader Kendra asked for suggestions on getting her kids to eat beans!  What a great idea for some posts.  So this week is BEAN WEEK! I’ve got 5 ways to add more beans into your families diet.  Today will be #1.

First, why more beans?

• Beans are healthy! In fact, Joel Fuhrman recommends a full cup of beans PER DAY!
• Beans are cheap!  Food is not cheap, but dry beans can help you get control over your food budget.
• Beans last a very long time!  Besides having 50lbs of oats, we probably have 150 lbs of different dried beans.

So, Tip #1 Add them to baked goods

Are you still substituting applesauce for the fat in your baked goods?  I think bean puree turns out a better result.

The Journal of the ADA reports when pureed cannellini beans were substituted for shortening in Brownies for 25% and 50% of the fat, no difference was detected. (You can read the abstract here) “Yielding an acceptable and more nutritious product”.

So, while this practice is best when you replace 50% of the fat in cake like baked goods, we replaced 75% of the fat in a cookie (because I love cookies!).  They also turned out pretty good.  They were eaten at least. 

First, I used

• 1 can of white beans (I used Great Northern Beans).
• Placed them in a food processor (remember, mine is just a $25 Cusinart from Costco)
• Blended until smooth (I did not add any water).  It turned out the consistency of shortening

Then, I used the puree in this cookie recipe, replacing 75% of the fat for white beans.  So, the original recipe used 1 cup of butter.  I used 1/4 cup of butter and 3/4 cup of the white beans.

Printable recipe

White Bean Chocolate Chip Cookies

• · ¾ Cup Pureed White beans
• 1/4 cup butter
• · 1 Cup brown sugar
• · 1 Cup white sugar
• · 2 Eggs
• · 1 tsp vanilla
• · 1 cup whole wheat flour
• · 1 ¼ cup White flour
• · 1 TBL baking soda
• · 1 tsp baking powder
• · 2 ½ cup Ground oat flour (put regular oats in blender or food processor until the consistency of flour)
• · Chocolate chips

Mix pureed beans, butter, brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, and vanilla thoroughly. Mix dry ingredients together. Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix softly with wooden spoon just until all flour is mixed in.

Drop by TBL onto cookie sheet. Bake at 400 for 6 minutes.

Makes 3 Dozen cookies

So come back tomorrow for Tip #2 for getting kids to eat their beans!

• Day 1: Pureed Beans in Baked goods
• Day 2: Bean Dip
• Day 3: Chick-En nuggets, Falafel
• Day 4: Roast them!
• Day 5: Mixing them in

TUESDAY: Whole Grains

We drove from Utah County to St. George, Utah yesterday. It’s spring break for us, and we wanted to get some warm weather hiking in.  Eating healthy can be tricky on the road, but this is what we brought:

• Raisins
• Cuties
• Sugar Snap Peas
• Bananas
• Apples
• Trail mix (nuts)
• Animal Crackers
• And a homemade treat!  This is the reason I’m filing this under whole grains.  I made my Low Fat Oatmeal cookies.  Then with the help of the flip flopper, we added:

1. Sesame seeds
2. Dried pineapple chunks
3. Unsweetened dried cranberries
4. slivered almonds
5. and chopped dates

They turned out delicious!!! And how much better does that taste than a package of cheap licorice at the gas station.

What do you bring on a road trip thats healthy? (and your kids will eat of course)

Its been a while since I’ve posted a dessert.  For a while I was obsessed with finding healthy dessert recipes, but I’ve laid off for the sake of cutting back on the sugar a bit.  But the first Sunday of every month we go to my in-laws house and everyone brings a dessert.  At least 4-5 families show up, which means 4-5 pans of brownies, or plates of cookies etc.  Its fun to find a treat that has some redeeming qualities.  Which is why I was glad to come across Ellie Kriegers Triple Chocolate cookies.  The redeeming qualities:

1. lower amount of butter than a normal cookie
2. Pecans (essential fats)
3. dark chocolate  (Heart healthy flavonoids)
4. They are so rich, you only want to eat 1 (or three).

I don’t even need to go into the fact that my kids loved these cookies.  They are getting so used to seeing nuts and dried fruit in their food and they no longer complain about it.  I love that about this journey to healthier eating with my family.  They have really grown up over this last year.

I’ve been hooked on The Biggest Loser this season.  I was so sad to hear Vicky talk about her kids never eating vegetables, not even potatoes.  She said they eat out every night.  She said her kids would only know what broccoli was if they learned it at school!!! How sad is that.  But the biggest tragedy was that Vicky didn’t like vegetables herself, so her attitude is going to affect her kids in a big way.  And one last thing…. GO MICHELLE!!!

I fear my kids like sugar a little too much. (maybe they get it from me). But ketchup boy told a friend yesterday that he wants to enter the Reflections contest. Then he said he wants to lose because the losers get a bag of candy.  The winners just get a trophy, but he’d rather have the candy of course. 

Fall is definitely in the air.  I’m beginning to want to make pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, and anything pumpkin.  My dad used to make our pumpkin pie from the pumpkin itself!  He was quite a cook.  I’m too lazy, and buy canned pumpkin.   All through church the flip flopper was asking me if we could make cookies when we got home.  The recipe I used to use for pumpkin cookies called for a whole cup of Shortening!  So I decided it would be a good day to do a little experimenting. 

We came up with a revised recipe.  Pumpkin cookies are one cookie that is OK to end up a little cakier in my opinion.  So cutting the fat, while it got rid of some of the flakiness, it was still plenty sweet, and plenty good.

Pumpkin ( a squash ) has so many great qualities.  There are loads of antioxidants, iron, zinc, and fiber.  Canned pumpkin is reasonably priced and can be used to replace fat in many baked goods.  For fun we like to buy pumpkin seeds that say they are seeds from 500 lb pumpkins, and then our garden yields MONSTOR sized pumpkins! It’s kind of fun.

I’m posting at Bookieboo today! It’s a cool community of women getting healthier. Check out my post if your a member.

Canola oil is fabulous for many reasons.  Salad dressings, frying, sauteing, baking.  I generally use it for baking.  I haven’t bought vegetable oil in years. No reason to when canola oil can do it better and healthier.  The other day I said you can replace solid fats in baked goods with healthier oils such as canola.  Use 1/4 cup less oil than the solid fat that it calls for. 

So I had to try it for the sake of the blog.  I decided I could no longer bake cookies until I lose a couple of pounds, but for the quality of the blog and for the sake of my readers, I had to try!  So I am further from my weight loss goal, but it was absolutely necessary.  I took a standard cookie recipe that called for 1/2 Cup of butter.  I used 1/4 cup of canola oil, and wah-lah!  DELICIOUS cookies, good enough to take to a family party.  Non heart clogging, just pure goodness.  Don’t forget, there is still sugar, it is still a treat, and there are still calories!, but half as much fat!  You really shouldn’t eat double the amount of cookies, cause there is half the fat in these, even though it’s heart healthy fat.  OK, I ate double, will not reveal how many.  My name is Amy, and I’m addicted to Cookies!

Sunday afternoons is the our favorite time to make cookies.  My kids love to help out. All three of them sit at the counter on stools taking turns dumping ingredients as I measure it out.  Everytime I throw in something quick like a teaspoon of vanilla, rather than passing it to the kids to get spilled during the hand off, I get “It was my turn to put something in! Why did you put that in the bowl mom, it was supposed to be me!” The order and the level of difficulty has to be completely fair to all three kids to avoid complete disappointment.  And yet for the love of cookies, we continue the ritual every Sunday afternoon.

Zonya inspired me last week with her chocolate chip cookie bars that virutally have no fat!  The only thing I changed was instead of semi-sweet chocolate chips, I added milk chocolate chips. I don’t know why semi-sweet exists. I do not care for them, and never buy them.  They turned out really good.  I had one vote for “love it”, one vote for “like it” and Ketchup boy declared, “I love it, and like it”.  They did keep trying to come back for more.  The kids gave one to my blind father-in-law who said, ” what am I eating here? Is it cake?”  Because it did turn out a bit cakey (as you can tell by the fact they have to eat it with a fork).   He continued to eat it without comment. Which is a red flag for not complete approval, cause he will usually declare he likes something if he does. For the record, I liked it, but I usually love anything with sugar and flour.